Your points about needing to make this stuff concrete, bite-sized and step-by-step are really important for us to remember. It’s particularly important that we try to tie to what people already know. It’s incredibly overwhelming to look at all of this stuff in the aggregate and separated from how people really work. As Anne Lamotte would say, we have to take it “bird by bird.”

Great post!

You’ve just put so many of my unwritten thoughts into words, and so eloquently! I’m very passionate about helping teachers develop pln’s, mostly because I’m so new at it myself and remember exactly what it was like trying to get up an running. I know how much work it is and how sometimes it’s difficult to keep up with the community aspect, but it’s SO worth it and has completely changed my outlook on teaching and learning. I agree with Scott that ning is a great way to start – I began on Classroom 2.0 and then really expanded my network when I jumped to twitter after a forum discussion about using twitter and listing twitter id’s – it was the best jumping-off point I could have picked. I can’t wait to share my experiences with my colleagues………the challenge, as you say, is making them understand WHY. I’ll be pondering………..

I love that Mother Theresa quote. One thing I am doing at BCE that I think is along this line is having Tech Mondays where I keep the lab open and have a session on something that I think that the teachers want to work on. Just in time learning. We have had updating webpages, excel, eduphoria, and they have requested uploading PPT to the web, and using the doc cam to scan a picture. They are short and only a few people come, but they have a chance to self select and learn what they are needing. I guess the other side of that is helping them to feel the need!

Janice

Make it sticky, make it relevant, make it connect to prior experience, and make it a manageable size. Your post is equal parts powerboost and instruction manual. I’m having one of those Life 2.0 watershed moments, realizing that I have opportunity to move from “the global to the particular” by taking the lead in introducing the PLN concept in my own setting. Had a conversation once upon a time with someone in my network about being an immigrant to the 2.0 mindset. Our default life 1.0 tendency is to forget the capacity for action placed in our hands by our networks; then we wake up with a start and remember that we can actually DO something. I hope to do something with networked learning here at my school, and your points go a long way toward clarifying both the how and the why.

Scaffolding was the missing ingredient for me until you helped me make the connection in your comment. For the uninitiated or tech-challenged, the blog+reader+twitter+etc. application combo seems far too intimidating and complex. I really like what you say about group identity, drawing clear thematic boundaries around the group to help people understand what it is and what it isn’t, and keep them from feeling too *exposed*. And we all know the motivational pitfalls of being part of a vague, drifting, stuck-in-the-morass group. I keep going back to Ning as I think about how to immerse folks in networking goodness right away, keep the app intimidation factor to a minimum, and *shelter* them in a well-defined shared space.